The Costs of Educational Independence
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At the end of May 2020, I gave a speech to the administrator’s conference of the Mid-South Association of Independent Schools. The speech was titled “Why Independent Schools Are Worth the Cost.” I have broken the speech up into part 1 here and part 2 (The Glories of Educational Independence).
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Americans love independence. The United States were founded when the colonies declared independence from Great Britain in 1776. The Southern states declared independence from the Union and then fought to maintain it in 1861.
And everyone loves having financial independence. It’s a great thing to have a job that pays the bills, knowing you don’t need assistance from relatives, charity, or the state.
But for some reason, not everyone likes independence when it comes to education. For the past 100+ years, Americans have gloried in public schools and universities funded by taxes and run by politicians and government bureaucrats. Sure, in a small town, parents have some influence in their public schools. But at the end of the day, public schools involve educational dependence.
The government takes your property taxes to fund the local schools, whether you use them or not. Then the government sets curriculum guidelines, deciding what will be taught, how it will be taught, and by whom it will be taught. This is not the American way. But more than that, I think it’s the wrong way.
What America needs is educational independence. There is increasing dissatisfaction with the public schools in modern America, and many families are looking for alternatives. Everyone knows homeschooling is growing, and it certainly provides educational independence. However, independent schools also provide a form of educational independence that can appeal to families. And there certainly are benefits to the school setting.
I believe educational independence is a beautiful thing. But let’s be very clear—it’s not easy. Educational independence requires hard work, financial support, and dedication. But the benefits far outweigh the costs. Educational independence gives us the freedom to do education the right way—to serve God and families according to conscience rather that the dictates of civil authorities.
I want to focus on two aspects of educational independence: (1) The costs of educational independence; and (2) The glories of educational independence
The Costs of Educational Independence
The first cost of educational independence is hard work. Running a school can be exhausting. Teaching can be exhausting. And these tasks are even harder at an independent school. You have limited resources. Most importantly, you have limited money. You have a smaller pool of teacher candidates, and it can be a struggle to find good teachers. Then those teachers are required to teach a variety of subjects, and they usually only get one planning period. Contrast this with your typical public-school teacher, who has 2 preps and at least 2 planning periods.
As a private school, you have to run with minimal administration. Private schools cannot afford the bloated administration of the public schools, where they have one administrator for every teacher. Independent schools certainly don’t need that ratio, but some extra administrative help couldn’t hurt.
The second cost of educational independence is financial support. Hard work is not enough. Independent schools need money to run. And the more the better. More money means you can hire better teachers, and pay them what they deserve. I’m convinced that the public-school monopoly drives down demand for private schools and thus drives down wages for many teachers. Imagine all the extra money going toward private schools if people weren’t being taxed to pay for public schools.
So we must be thankful for those who are dedicated to teaching in independent schools, often for lower salaries, rather than seeking employment in the unionized public schools. The two means of funding for independent schools are (1) tuition and (2) charitable giving. Schools have to charge families tuition to fund the school. But charitable giving permits schools to offer scholarship and reduced tuition, taking some of the burden off families. And in order to receive charitable giving, you need generous donors. And you also need to spend time and energy raising money.
Dedication to Educational Independence (Don’t Take the Money)
Most of all, educational independence takes dedication. Every private school was started by someone who had a vision for the future, who was willing to put time and resources into forming an independent school to train up the next generation.
However, it also takes dedication to maintain educational independence. There is always the temptation to take money from the government, whether state or federal. And the government is happy to provide it. Why? Because the government always knows that with money comes control. There is always a string attached to government money, though that string may not be noticed for some time.
There are so many areas in our society where government money brings regulation and control. We see this most clearly where the federal government controls the states with money. In 1987, there was a Supreme Court case called South Dakota v Dole that upheld Congress bribing the states to set the drinking age at 21. Even though the drinking age is a state issue according to our Constitution, the federal government gives federal highway funds to states—and it places conditions on that money. In many ways this system has upended federalism. The states have been drinking at the federal trough for years, and they are in no condition to say no to the federal dough. The money has made the states weak.
But that’s the states. That can’t happen to schools? Sure it can—and it does. Look at the universities. Almost the entire higher ed system is funded by the government in some way. The public universities get state and federal money, but the private universities are also getting federal money.
There are very few universities that do not take federal money, Grove City College and Hillsdale being two of them. And why did they not take the money? Because they wanted educational independence. They didn’t want the government telling them what to do. Both schools fought cases in the federal courts, and they decided to even prohibit students from receiving federal loans in order to prevent the schools from being regulated.
For if a university has students that receive any sort of federal aid, then the university is subject to a whole host of regulations, including sex discrimination. Now why do I mention this? Because there is an attempt by progressives in the United States to redefine sex discrimination so as to include “sexual orientation.” There was already a 7th Circuit federal appeals court case in 2017 that ruled that discrimination based on “sexual orientation” constitutes “sex discrimination” under Title 7 of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which covers employment. (And now this applies to all the U.S. under the June 2020 ruling by the Supreme Court, Bostock v. Clayton County) You can be sure that progressives are seeking to do the same for “sex discrimination” under Title 9 of the Educational Amendments Act of 1972—which only applies to institutions that receive financial aid.
If Title 9 ends up covering sexual orientation discrimination, this would mean every private school that receives federal funding—even student loans—could not have rules prohibiting homosexual or transsexual behavior. This would be a massive problem for religious schools. They would have to choose between their moral commitments and the money. The private Christian colleges will have two choices: (1) compromise their beliefs and take the money, or (2) stop taking the money and make cuts or close down.
And we all know what the temptation will be in that situation. The pressure will be immense. Imagine being asked to take a massive pay cut from your salary and all the problems that would create for you family. You may have to sell your house for a smaller one, change schools, etc. And that is the fate that awaits all schools—university or K-12—that take federal money. They are subject to the dictates of the federal courts.
J. Gresham Machen (1881–1937) was a professor of New Testament at Princeton and Westminster seminaries, and he founded both Westminster Theological Seminary (1929) and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (1936). Machen is known as a defender of biblical Christianity, seen in his classic work Christianity and Liberalism. But Machen was also a great champion of both liberty and Christian education. He testified before Congress against the Department of Education. In 1933, he gave a lecture at the Educational Convention in Chicago titled, “The Necessity of the Christian School.”
Machen expressed great concern over federal money for schools:
The thing is really quite clear. Every lover of human freedom ought to oppose with all his might the giving of Federal aid to the schools of this country; for Federal aid in the long run inevitably means Federal control, and Federal control means control by a centralized and irresponsible bureaucracy, and control by such a bureaucracy means the death of everything that might make this country great.
Against this soul-killing collectivism in education, the Christian school, like the private school, stands as an emphatic protest. In doing so, it is no real enemy of the public schools. On the contrary, the only way in which a state-controlled school can be kept even relatively healthy is through the absolutely free possibility of competition by private schools and church schools; if it once becomes monopolistic, it is the most effective engine of tyranny and intellectual stagnation that has yet been devised.
How much more problematic is it when private schools take federal money.
But it is not just the federal money. There is also the issue of state vouchers. There are many people involved with independent schools that support vouchers, as they would bring tax money to even private schools that participate. Yet this subjects schools to further state regulation. In fact, this happened in Maryland recently, where a Lutheran school had a policy reserving the right to deny gay and transgender students admission. Maryland said this violated its discrimination policy, and a court ordered the school to return the money.
Would your school be ready to return $60,000 to the state? Can your school afford the costs of litigation? Or would you just change your school policy? The fact is, state money brings state control. While regulations may not be imposed initially upon private schools receiving voucher money, they will down the road. As history has shown, the state will slowly creep its way into regulating everything. And for schools, this means moral conduct policy and behavior, curriculum, and teacher requirements.
Thus we see the dangers of educational dependence. He who pays the piper calls the tune. And those paying may soon be calling a tune you do not want to hear.
We Need Principles
How do you stand against this? How do you maintain independence? We need principles. The only way to prevent falling into temptation is to have a stronger desire, a stronger commitment to something else. You must be firmly dedicated to freedom, and firmly dedicated to God and biblical morality. If you are not, the money seems too good to pass up. And you will become the servant of the state. In what sense are we free if schools take government money? In what sense are they independent? Independent schools should be seeking to free themselves of government control, not enslave themselves.
You need to know that there are many enemies of educational freedom out there. We all heard about the Harvard law professor Elizabeth Bartholet’s recent call for a near-ban on homeschooling. She said, “many homeschooling parents are extreme ideologues, committed to raising their children” in Christian “belief systems.” Supposedly, this is dangerous “because society may not have the chance to teach them values important to the larger community, such as tolerance of other people’s views and values.” By “society” she means the leftist public schools. She wants tolerance. Of course, these people are not “tolerant” of Christianity or conservative values. So what she really means is she wants public schools to teach children progressive anti-Christian values.
I took an education law course in law school, and the professor was once asked his position on private education. He frankly admitted that he thought private schools should be banned. This is a law professor, and he thinks your schools should be illegal, shut down, and the students should be forced to attend public schools.
There are many people in elite schools and in positions of power who think only the state is fit to educate and that private schools interfere with the public-school system. On the latter point, they are right—private education is a threat to the state school system. But this is how it ought to be. Without private schools, the state schools would have a true monopoly rather than the quasi-monopoly they currently enjoy.
What you are doing as an independent school is a great thing. But it costs you a lot. It takes hard work to make for a successful school, and it takes dedication to keep it independent, to maintain freedom. But it is all worth it. For there are many glories in educational independence.
